MUZIKOLOSKI ZBORNIK - MUSICOLOGICAL ANNUAL XVI, LJUBLJANA 1980
UDK 78.01 Janaček
JANACEK'S AESTHETICS Jaroslav Ji rane k (Praha)
When considering the aesthetics of compose11s we always examine their writings and other linguistic documents, as well as their compo- sitions as the ultimate result of their creative approach. Janaček's case ts particularly interersting, because - oontrary :to other composers -
Janaček was extremely active in the literary sphere practically through- out his whole life. His literary heritage is rich as regards genres, in- cluding as it does 1) belletristic works (feuilletons), 2) critical and pedagogical articles, 3) essays on musicoTogy and ethnography, 4) and a number of memoires and autobiographic material. It is interesting to compare Janaček's aesthetic opinions oontained explicitly in his theoretical works and implicitly in his artis:tic expressions, both mu- sical and literary. A part of Janaček';s literary heritage has already been processed and appraised by expertis whose works can now be taken as a base for further research. I have in mind the studies of Arne Novak (Leoš Janaček spisovatel - Leoš Janaček the Writer - in: Janaček, L., Fejetony z Lidovych noviny - Feuilletons from The People's Newspaper, Brno 1958), Vladimir Helfert (Kofeny Janačkova
kritickeho stylu - The Roots of Janaček's Critical Style - same source), Pavel Eisner (Janaček 1spisovatel - Janaček the Writer - Hudbeni rozhledy - Music Review - 11, 1958) and Antonin Sychra
(Janačkuv spisovatelsky sloh klič k semantice jeho hudby - Jana-
ček's Style asa Writer the Key to the Semantics of His Music - Este- tika - Aesthetics - 1, 1964). I think it is possible to agree with the oonclusions at which all of them almost unanimously arrived. Janaček
was unquestionably a real artist also as a writer. In the literary 1sphere, too, he manifested himself as a modem author on the boundary between impressionism and expresisionism with the accent rather on the latter. At the :same tirne, however, he wholly preserved his indi- viduality, forming his fundamental creative base in his personal con- ception of folk realism. However, if we are to proceed further in our deliberations on Janaček'is aesthetics, we must try to compare Jana-
ček':s complexly conceived work as a writer with his equally com-
plexly conceived work as a composer. Moreover, we must, in parti- cular, try to define the Janačekism concept, i. e. Janaček's artistic style and his personal aesthetios, genetically and historically.
A. Novak was right in placing the phenomenon represented by
Janaček on the historical cross-roads of style epochs. It was not, how- ever, merely the question of the boundary be;tween impressionism and expressionism; in his music there is also the boundary between neo- Classicism, neo-Baroque and neo-folklorism. Janaček was intensely concerned with problems of the artistic trends of the 20th century and keenly followed the development of world art, agreeing with some things and disagreeing (more often!) with other things. He was a modern man, but always wholly individual. Eisner's statement to the effect that it is not easy to decide what is dialectism and what is neologi,sm in the case of Janaček is more far-reaching than the writer himself may have presumed. It 1s not the question merely of Janaček's
literary stylistics, but directly the key question of Janaček's artistic style in general.1 Janaček cannot be wholly ranked in musical impres- sioni1sm, expressionism or neo-Classicism and the artistic trends con- nected with them. Similarly as Otakar Ostrčil and Ladi1slav Vycpalek,
Janaček was an intrinsically modem, but simultaneously specifically Czech personality representing a synthesis of style par excellence which cannot be explained at all without the Mstorical logics of its home pvovenience.2
Janaček was a real Czech, more precizely a Moravian; in studying his specific personality we cannot overlook the historical backgmund of the inequable development of Bohemia and Moravia.
While at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries Prague was en- chanted by the art of Mozart, Brno was still captivated by fashionable Viennese goods of the type of Miiller, Siissmayer and others,. While the typical features of the so-called ancien regime (aristocratic orchestras and a cosmopolitan bent for Italian opera) disappeared in Bohemia approximately at the beginning of the 19th century, they survived in Moravia for another good thirty to forty year;s. The belated politico-
1 Attempts have been made to solve the pmblem of Janaček's origi- nality of style onesidedly in the sense of its "dialectism". One of such at- temps - incorrect due to their non-dialectic onesidedness - is, for example, Dietmar Strobel's study Auf der Suche nach Jancičeks musikgeschichtlichen Ort, Colloquium Musica Bohemica et Europea, Brno 1970, Brno 1972, pp.
397-406.
2 I tried to outline the genesis and synthetic nature of Janaček's ar- tistic style in my study Leoš Janaček jako stylovy mikrokosmos česke hudby 20. stoleti (Leoš Janaček as a Microcosmos of StyVe in Czech Music of the 20th Century), Hudbeni veda (Musicology), 6, 1969, pp. 150-171. - Comp.
also the paragrapb. on the formation of styles in the concluding chapter of
Dejin česke hudbeni kuitury 1890~1945 (The History of Czech Music Culture 1890-1945), vol. I, Prague 1972, vol. II in print at the Academia Publishing House.
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economic development of Moravia could not but have natural conse- quences also for the s:pecifically different course of the national revival in Moravia. In Bohemia the process of the bourgeois democratic revo- lution had progressed to such an extent that the development of the national revival had entered it.s second pha:se, marked by the fact that towns were ever more becoming centres of the patdotic move- ment (from where Czech national oonsciousness spread back to the oountryside). In Moravia it was the other way round. Prague was just beginning its victorious struggle on the part of feudally desintegrated Moravia, a:s the revival had not as yet reached the towns from the countryside. This of course involves music as we11. When in Bohemia the .idea of romantism showed itself to be exceptionally fruitful and · continued from folk art to the monumental attitudes of Smetana, in Moravia it stagnated on the level of the ideal of simple national folk art, represented most outstandingly from the artistic viewpoint by Kfižkovsky and developed theoretically by the folklioristic movement.
This naturally forms the his:torical basis of our explanation3 as to why Janaček, firmly rooted in his native Moravia, was remote from the rnmantic ideal of Smetana's programme music and the aesthetics of Otakar Hostinsky and why he was closer to the formalistic Her- bartian aesthetics of Durdik and Zimmermann.
On this basis we explain why the artistic world of Dvorak with its folk-like .spon:taneous directness and formal conservativeness was far closer to the young Janaček than the musically and ideologically exacting, reflective and formally new type of art of Smetana.
However, this historical "Moravian heritage" also had its positive aspects for Janaček, these being manifested in the remarkable dia- lectics of "dialecti:sm and neologi!sm", conservativeness and progress.
He could approach the then new European trends (impressionism, expressionism and so on) without the burden of romantism. Not even when seeking scientific answerrs to his questions - and Janaček sought them throughout his whole life - was he burdened with the specu- lative heritage of German idealistic philosophy. He also had no pre- judices (after overooming the dogmatism of Zimmermann and Durdik) opened up by the new, positivistically empiric trends, concretely Wundt's psychology and modem ethnographical study. A lifelong fondness for psychology a:nd extensive ethnographical work were really inseparable attributes of Janaček's artistic personality. Hi:s in- terest in psychology primarily oriented him towards the means of
a The possible objection to the effect that in the Eighties and Nineties the politico-economic situation in Moravia was quite different and that by then the high degree of inequability of the process of development had been smoothed out is not justified in this case. Moreover, the ideological superstructure manifests itself through its natura! belatedness, so that
Janaček just as a musician with Moravian feelings could follow only the trend set by Kfižkovsky and the folkloristic movement. '
expression (often at the cost of a formal syBtem) and necess:arily from here to the encroachment of art on man's inner world. His modern ethnographical approach was again oriented towards the depiction of a song in the concrete totality of the general life of mankind.4 Thus · in fact from art to lije once again. Both tendencies, the psychological and the ethnographical one, had an entirely synergical influence in this respect. A qualitative leap ahead then came about in Janaček's
pvocess of development when - favourably predisposed. in this way - he placed himself at the head of the powerful wave of artistic realism of the Eighties and Nineties and in particular of Russian literary realism. It waJs just in this sphere that Janaček found fertile soil for the creative development of the most intrinsic forces of his artistic talent and his artistic belief which had grown from the environment of his native Moravia. Here another path of escape from the mecha- nical folkloristic approach, in whose existence he firmly believed, pre- sented itself to him, i. e. the path represented by psycho1ogical think- ing out to the end and deepening of folk songs and language whose intonation fund was simultaneously to serve as a starting point in the creation of artistic pictures of life. Yes, it was at this point that, on the basis of his important, new appraisal, not the folk song and folk customs, but directly the rfonguage of the people won the leading place in Janaček's musically l'eahstic observatiion of life. Here we find our- .selves at the roots of Janaček',s mature style of life solely from which we can deduce Janaček's aesthetics, the style which he later took for the theoretical justification of his so-called speech-melody theory.
Our consideration of the historical genesis of Janaček's creative personality and his aesthetics would not be complete, however, if we ignored the general factor represented by his East European orienta- tion. The fact that the national revival 1s:truggle had not yet been won in the process of the bourgeod.s democratic revolution in Moravia and that new tasks of the class struggle of the working people against the bourgeoiis:ie had arisen explains the conditions which in Janaček gave rise to the national and, in the real sens:e of the word, social unity so characteristic of him even if we do not know directly of his socialist civil eonviction.5 But his concern about the unsolved and, in the con- ditions of the then capitalis:t society, ever more complicated problems of the countryside was sha:red by the intelligentsia of all the formerly
4 Comp. his characteristic statement: "The folk song is, as a beautiful language, dependent on the place where it is sung, on the tirne at which it is sung, on the occasion on which and in the mood in which it is sung.
It changes into an air and interjections when these circumstances are changed." Quot. af.ter Janaček, L., O Zidove pisni a Zidove hudbe (Folk Songs and Fo1k Music), Prague 1955, p. 291.
s After the premiere of Maryčka Magd6nova someone is alleged to have said to him: "That Maryčka, she's a socialist meeting!" To this Jana-
ček replied: "Yes, that's what I wanted!" Quot. after Seda, J., Leoš Janaček,
Prague 1961, p. 28.
prevailingly agricultural countries of East and South East Europe. The wave of vital ethnographical interest, which in this country reached its climax at the tirne of the Ethnographical Exhibition (Prague 1895) and also had a favourable influence on Janaček, as mentioned pre- viously, was its theoretically greatly mediated s:cientific reflex. Herein lies the more general bond which links, through their shared ethno- graphical interest, Janaček with Bartok, Kodaly and Enesco, but which - in spite of ali concrete historico-social pecularities and national and regional differences - links him with the East European personalities also from the viewpoint of musical composit1on.6
After overcoming the influence and later reoccurrence of roman- tism, Janaček consciously left the traditional 1soil of Central European musical development and turned to the inexhaustible wealth of Ea:st European folklore culture, in particular to tha:t in Moravia. The hi- storical greatness of his chosen task best comes to light if we compare, for example, the traditionally romantic opera šarka with the folklo- ristic opera The Beginning of a Novel and the folk ballet Rekos Ra- koczy whose belated, in fact ,gtill pre-romantic folklorism could not, due to their primitiveness, hold their ground artistically in the com- petition of the mature classico-romantic technique which had been developed throughout whole centuries on the basis of European expe- rience. Janaček's brilliance lies in the fact that he did not conse- quently a11ow himself to be led to the mechanical adoption of this mature We!St European technique and that - as Mussorgsky had done before him - he placed in all seriousness the problem after the expedience of the West European path of intellectualiza:tion of the home folklore whose roots lay entirely elsewhere. The mature tech- nique of W est European music culture developed historically, being based on its own material, originally also home folk musical imagi- nation. The difforence which arose here is connected with the inequa- ble process of cultural-historical development which divided the cul- tural nations of Europe into those which had created their own mature artificial music culture several centuries earlier and those, especially in East and South East Europe, in wh!ose case it was s1till possible in the 19th century to trace the organic continuity of the national tra- dition only in folk music.7 In this cultural-hi!Storical environment the
6 Comp. Vancea, Z„ Janaček und die fiihrenden Komponisten der siid- osteuropčiischen Schulen: Bartok, Enesco, KoldaVy, in: Leoš Janaček a soudo- ba hudba (Leoš Janaček in Contemporary Music), pp. 330-344.
7 Zena Vancea quotes in this respect Kodaly's remarkable statement:
"The justification of the existence of folk music does not end with the fact that it satisfies the need of the people. It also has a connection with the present life of us all and contains the core, the plan of a great music culture. The development and consummation of this culture are the task of the cultured masses. However, the force which is necessary for this can result only from complete unity with the people. In order that we may be a nation we must in the first place be people. This means that for us
natural need arose in the process of creating a modem national mu- sical language of intellectualizing the home musical :liolklore material in a likewise individual way, i. e. by means of a corresponding tech- nique, in the manner which we enoounter in the case of the Hungarian composer Kodaly, the Rumanian composer Enesco, but also Bartok and the young Stravinsky, the Polish oomposer Szymanowski, the Slovak composer Suchoii and others. Even in the 19th century all these found an example in Mussorgsky and our Janaček who even in the conditions of the proved pan-European historical oontinuity of their national cultures rejected the idea of the mechanical adoption of the West European musical technique and endeavoured to develop an entirely special technique generalizing the characteristic folk musical material of their own regional environment.s
The bas,ic chauracteristics of Janaček's East European musical conception can be summarized clearly and briefly in approximately the following points:
l. In the West European musical language, which had undergone a process of emancipation roughly from the Baroque epoch, the in- strumental type of melodic invention finally prevailed, while in Ja-
naček's music, on the contrary, vocal-melodic invention prevails even though his typical "interjections" are instrumentally figurative in nature.·
2. While West European muisi.c of the 17th, rnth and 19th conturies is marked by tonally harmonic musical thinking, Janaček's musical language is characteristica]ly marked by a wealth of musical modality.
the tradition of folk music signifies incomparably more than for the western cultured nations which created highly valuable artificial music whole cen- turies ago. In their case folk music changed long ago into artificial music and in the work of their great masters we can find that which at present we have only in our folk music, i. e. organic continuity of the national tra- dition."
8 In this connection it is interesting to quorte also the opinion of B. V.
Asafyev expressed in 1925 in his study Contemporary Russian Musicology and Its Historical Tasks: " ... in the West European musical material fund and the method of its processing the technique of the shaping process has developed to such an extent that there is nothing to master. There is only one starting point: the unavoidableness· of enlarying the number of possible sound structures and sound relations, either by an invasion of new, fresh material, or by the spreading of tempered systems. Such is the situation in the West. In our country this crisis is felt, on the contrary, partly by an imperfect awareness of our own intonation systems and partly by the mechanical application not only of technical procedures, but also of pro- cessing methods foreign to our characteristic musical material." He then arrives at the conclusion that the qualitative contribution of Russian music culture cannot be secured in any other way than by ensuring that indi- vidual Russian musical material is intellectually processed in an equally individual and specifically corresponding way.
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3. In comparison with West European tectonics of an evolutionary type, Janaček's central tectonic principle is baised on the suite which suited better his realistic aesthetic ideal and his need of plastic, "al- most statically tangible" figurativeness.
4. Closely connected with this is the striking difference in his structure, because compared with the traditional vertical diffeven- tiation of the harmonico-polyphonic structure of West European music,
Janaček's musical expression is also vertically complex in nature. This complexity of sound, growing from the base formed by the hetero- phony of folk music and foom a vertical combination of melody and
"interjections", is the source of the timbre and tone effects of Jana-
ček's music.
5. A oontrast to the vertical sound complexity of Janaček's musi- cal expression consists in his striking differentiation in the horizontal plane, i. e. his considerable degree of looseness i.n the fields of metre, agogics and tempo, characteristic of the free musical vocal expression and the rhapsodical style of play of folk musicians. In this case, too, it is the question of a typologically antithetic speciality, because West European music always inclined, on the contrary, to considerably com- plex metric 1stabilization in the horizontal plane.
6. Janaček's musical language manifests certain residues of archaic musical procedures in the field of intonation (analogous to the archaic verbal turns of speech
a
la "ažtma" ("up to darkness") to which. P.Eisner drew attention), for example, a characteristic melodic ducturs on the ba1sis of a fourth-fifth distributing of the octave.9
Of aesthetic relevance, however, are the hierarchization, concre- tization and individualization of his musical language reaching almost as far as style. A systematic analysis of the style of Janaček's repre- sentative musical works, to which only veference can be made here,10
showed that Janaček's musical work represents, in its way, a micro- coismos of Czech music of the 2Qth century due just to its 1style. Featu- ves in common with impressionism and to an even greater extent with expressionism can easily be demonstrated also in his musical work, but his individual musical realism remainrs the organic, binding and synthetizing force of the style of all hi1s musical expression. The si-
9 Attention was once drawn to these by V. Lebl who ranked them, incorrectly in my opinion, among melodies which are wholly freeing them- selves from their mother origin of speech melodies in order to become an entirely superior musical element, a kind of idee fixe penetrating through a whole work ... " Comp. Llibl, V., Diskusni prispevek k refercitUm o Ja- načkove ncipevkove technice (Discussion Contribution With Regard to Pa- pers on Janaček's Speech Melody Technique), quot. coll. Leoš Janaček a svetova hudba (Leoš Janaček and World Music), pp. 202-203 with musical example.
10 Comp. note No. 2 above.
milarity of his musical style and the style of his literary expressions is really conspicuous (the opinions expressed by A. Novak, P. Eisrter and particularly A. Sychra in this respect were wholly correct) and his speech melody "aesthetic creed", winding its way like a red thread through hLs literary work in both fleeting and more fundamental formulations, is the main connecting medium of this similarity.
In both its positive and negative ruspects, Janaček's speech melody theory is also the most characterilstic expression of Janaček as . a theo- reticizing composer and the most characteristic model of his theoretical thinking. Janaček's scientific interest in speech can roughly be defined by sayising that he was concerned with the syntagmatic rather than the paradigmatic plane, with "parole" rather than "langue", in so far as we can say that he was interested in speech as a language. Defi- nitely closer to the truth will be the statement that Janaček was inte- rested in speech not as a linguistic utterance, but ais a sound document of extralinguistic situations, as an immediate sound expression of the human psyche. This affords an explanation to the question of why his approach to live speech was of a phonetic and not phono1ogical na- ture11 and why Sychra was able to prove conclusively through his analysis that due to his stylistic procedures Janaček tended, also as a writer, to emphasize not the semantic aispect of the given text, but its direct expression. In the case of Janaček absolutization of the psycho- logical and under-estimation of the socio-institutional fact of speech communication. were unquestionably connected with the contemporary influences of positivistic psychology, especially that propagated by Wundt (and with his exaggerated belief in Hipp's chronoscope!). His uncritical, almost too literal acception of Wundt's principle of the so-called psychophysiological parallelism aliso had an unfavourable influence on Janaček's musical theoretical thinking, concretely on his theory on harmony. Concerned here in particular is an unclearly de-
11 I had a previous opportunity (comp. my study Semanticke možnosti a meze hudby - The Semantic Possibilities and Limits of Music - Este- tika - Aesthetics, 12, 1975, pp. 77-107) to draw attention to Janaček's
polemics with Hostinsky on the subject of Czech musical declamation (in his review of Kuba's collection Sl'ovanstvo ve svych zpevech - The Slavs in Their Songs), reprinted in the quot. coll. O Zidove pisni a Zidove hudbe (Folk Songs and Folk Music), pp. 129-131. Hostinsky (0 česke deklamaci hudebni - Czech Musical Declamation - Prague 1886) stood on a phono-' logical base and Janaček on a phonetic one. H9stinsky was right in so far as he drew attention to the influence of certain phonologically specific pecularities of the Czech language, for example., the accenting of short syllables at the beginning of. a word which of necessity influences also . the character of the musical declamation of the Czech language. Janaček, the hunter of "speech melodies", was in turn, due to his viewpoint, close to recognizing and understanding the practically unlimited possibilities of the emotional sub-text of spoken language. Phonological elements naturally forced themselves on Janaček as well, doing so, however, wholly elemen- tally in the dialect form of his "short" dialect.
fined differenta:tion or incorrect confos]on of the purely physiological and psychological after-effects in Ja:naček's "pacit" and "spletna'',12 intermediated (by underestimation of or wholly inadequate respect for the socially institutionalized field of paradigmaticis) by Ja:naček's
refusal to recognize the harmonic unitis of a chord and his founding of the interpretation of harmonic phenomena on a mere expressional
"link" of different tones. Ranking here is also his a:nalogous inter- pretation of modality (so typical of Ja:naček the composer!), upon which he likewise looked purely psychologically as an "alteration", denying its historical connection with old (so-called church) keys.13
It is an indisputable fact that these theoretical ideas were re- flected not only in Janaček's musical compositions, but also in his literary works - as we have seen. What el1se led Arne Novak to over- estimate the impressionistic elements in Janaček than his psychological fetishization of a moment - even if in ·scientific accord with Hipp's chronoscope? And what else led Sychra to define the basic subjectivi- zation trend of Ja:naček's prosaic style if not an endeavour to capture both a momentary psychic detail a:nd the psychological depiction of given extra-speech situations as truthfully as pO!ssible? And what other mea:ning has Janaček's indefatigable collection of speech me- lodies than a desired empiric base for his work as a composer?
Janaček was greater, however, a:s an artist than a theoretician and the aesthetics inherent to his work as a composer are more legi- timate than the aesthetics of his written theoretical (not to the extent of his belletristic) works. For this reason, when Sychra speaks about the modern shifting of accents to the subject a:nd a general shift from the objective to the subjective as a stylistic trend heading towards the psychologically most truthful depiction of even incidental speech situations (which is definitely correct), we begin to deliberate on the question of whether this characterization is .complete. True, Sychra
12 I am unable to clarify here Janaček's characteristic musico-theore- tical terminology, likewise tributary to the mentioned dialectics of his dialectisms and neologisms. I should therefore like to draw attention to the dictionary of Janaček's terminology compiled by Z. Blažek, in: Janaček,
L., Hudebne teoreticke dilo (Janaček, L., His Musico-Theoretical Work), 1, Prague-Bratislava 1968, pp. 47-51. - As far as specialized literature is concerned, I should like to draw attention particularly to Chapter 13 of . Volek's book Novodobe harmonicke systemy z hlediska vedecke filozofie (Modern Harmonic Systems from the Aspect of Scientific Philosophy), Pra- gue 1961, pp. 231-277, which in my opinion affords the best explanation of Janaček's theory on harmony. Jaroslav Volek also correctly draws at- tention to the previously mentioned unfavourable influence of Wundt, le„
p. 257.
13 The question of the theoretical and historical justification of such an interpretation was also raised by Jii'i Vysloužil; comp. Janačkova tvorba ve svetle jeho hudebne folkloristicke teorie (Janaček's Work in the Light of His Musico-Folklori>stic Theory), in: quot. coll. Leoš Janaček a soudoba hudba (Leoš Janaček and Contemporary Music), le., p. 365.
also spea~s about the dramatized structure of the intonation of a mo- vement in the case of Janaček and draws attention in the previously mentioned way to "a dialogue in a dialogue" in the opera From the House of the Dead, but he does not devote adequate a.tterrtion to Ja-
naček'rs trend to dramatize (in our opinion as equally important a!S his trend towards a "speech-like" style). After the subjectivization of arti- stic utterances, Janaček's indisputable elements of dramatiz.ation are a very effective instrument of re-objectivization. It is quite true that, with his characteristic technique employing ostinatos, repetition, va- ration and figuration, Janaček aimed at expressing a moment directly and with the greatest possible degree of psychological veracity also in his music (and th1s procedure also represents the basic source of all the expressionistic elements in his works as a composer), but he never stopped at this. His figurations are never "merely figurations", but have the character of thematic figurations whether they originated as the result of dethemization or, on the contrary, just new themati- zation. And in the case of Janaček this is of profound aesthetic import.14
It is certainly not just a matter of chance that the focal point of J anaček':s work as a composer - as is now generally recognized - lies in his operatic, musically dramatic works. Janaček really did also create a new style in 2Qth century opera and found followers also abroad (for example, B. Britten in some of his operns). Janaček's mu- sical works do not, however, deny a strong dramatic charge, this applying also to his purely instrumenta! compositions, even piano ones where this could perhaps be least expected. A very rsharp con- trast, often achieved by means of a striking change in the expression of decisive sub-intonation factors (melody and its type, dynamics, tem- po and agogics, rhythm, structure, phrasing and so on), is also cha- racteristic of his purely instrumen:tal works. And thus Janaček's piano compositions are also marked by that special corrugated and inter- rupted sound and striking contrast of expression which usually ac- company a really dramatic plot. Not only this outer characterization is concerned here, however. Otakar Hostinsky, who concerned him- self with the aesthetics of the drama and »the dramatic« practically throughout his whole life, arrived at two very substantial postulates of "the dramatic": the requirement of "bodily" actualization (directly acceissible to and graspable by our senses) of a given plot and the.
requirement of a strict causal structure of this plot. On the basis of the example represented by Our Lady of Frydek it would be pos- sible to demonstrate the way in which Janaček succeeded in a directly physical manner in actualizing his musical description by means of
14 I recently dealt with this problem in greater detail in my study Dramaticke rysy Janačkova klavirniho stylu (The Dramatic Features of
Janaček's Piano Style), Opus rpusicum, 10, 1978, Nos. 5-6, to which I should like to draw attention here.
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psychologically uniquely graded ostension based purely on sound. It would also be possible to draw attention to the way in which he suc- ceeded in dramatically actualizing hi.s musical pictures by revealing consistently inner antitheses leading to open conflicts as well. What eLse is Janaček's method of dethematization and regressive or new thematization of his characteristic instrumenta! figurations if not an index representation of the theme in the first and a figuration in the second case? And since in Janaček's pianostyle instrumenta! figurations and a cantabile theme represent extreme expressional anttthe1ses:, the contrasting turns achieved by their means acquire the character of dramatic conditione~ conflicts with an innearly strict causal structure.
In this respect even Janaček's piano works are dramatic in the real sense of the word and his piano style can be described as dramatic also in this aesthetica.lly strictest ,sense.
The general wealth of J anaček's realism as the back bone of his mature artistic style is also clearly connected with the almost explo- sively dramatic dynamtsm of the composer's artistic talent. Mention is often made of his "wealth of genres", his "tendency towards social criticism", his "psychological depth" and even his "ethical nature"
(Sychra). All these perceptions are unquestionably correct and all of them can be documented, but Janaček's artistic realism cannot be reduced purely to a single one of them. Janaček's realism is a fact which is as equally dynamic as it is indisputable, because Janaček
was spared the fate of those composeliS: who - after having arrived at an individually defined style - did nothing more than merely enhance it quantitatively, thus creating something of the nature of an "encyclopaedia of their own already finished work«. Janaček was different! He was alway,s individual, but always new. And the conti- nuity of his style was strikingly dynamic. I think that this was due to the profound, previously explained and, in this respect, blessed inner antagonism of his creative nature, an antagonism in which the tension between a theoreticizing observer and an earthly, spontaneous artist did not play the smallest role. The triumph of artis1tic deeds over the aesthetics of theoreticizing ideas and words is more than understandable in the case of an artist of J anaček's sita ture and weight.
English Verston by Joy Turner-Kadečkova
POVZETEK
Empirična baza za razmišljanje o Janačkovi estetiki je primerjava njegovega skladateljskega in pisateljskega dela. Slednje obsega Janačkovo
literarno (beletristično), kritično in pedagoško ter znanstveno dejavnost (glasbeno-teoretsko, folkloristično oziroma etnografsko). Pričujoče mnenje se veže na dosedanje študije A. Novaka (Leoš Janaček spisovatel, v: Feje- tony z Lidovych novin, Brno 1958), V. Helferta (Koi'eny Janačkova kritickeho
stylu, ib.), P. Eisnerja (Janaček spisovatel, Hudebru rozhledy, 11, 1958) in A. Sychre (Janačkuv spisovatelsky sloh klič k semantice jeho hudby, Este- tika, 1, 1964). Sklepi, do katerih so prišli ti avtorji, so točni, zlasti, ker je bil Janaček umetnik tudi kot pisatelj. Tudi v literarni smeri je dokazal moderni pristop v smeri med impresionizmom in ekspresionizmom z nagla- som na drugem, hkrati pa ohranil svojo individualnost, ustvarjajoč svoj umetniški fundament na temelju petega ljudskega realizma. J. Jiranek pri- merja Janačkovo kompletno pisateljsko in skladateljsko delo in skuša ome- jiti »janačkizem«, Janačkov umetniški stil in njegovo individualno estetiko genetsko in historično. Zrelega Janačka uvršča tja, kjer so Musorgski, Ko- daly, Bartok, mladi Stravinski, Szymanowski in Suchofi v kontekstu vzhod- noevropske kulture, in naznačuje njegov vzhodnoevropski koncept v na- slednjih temeljnih točkah: l. V zahodnoevropski glasbi, kakor se je eman- cipirala od baroka dalje, je ob koncu prevladal instrumentalni tip melodične
invencije, v Janačkovi glasbi pa dominira vokalna melodična invencija,
čeravno je občasno instrumentalno figurativna; 2. medtem ko je zahodno- evropska glasba 17. do 19. st. tonalno harmonična, je za Janačka značilno
bogastvo glasbene modalitete; 3. v primerjavi z zahodnoevropsko tektoniko evolucijskega tipa sloni Janačkov osrednji tektonski princip na suiti, ki bolj odgovarja njegovemu realističnemu estetskemu idealu in njegovi potrebi po plastičnosti; 4. z vertikalno zvočno kompleksnostjo Janačkove glasbene strukture kontrastira njegova diferenciranost s horizontalnega vidika, me-
trična in agogična sproščenost, ki je značilna tudi za tempe. Tudi v tem primeru gre za nasprotno tipološko lastnost, ker je zahodnoevropska glasba V'selej inklinirala obratno, v ,horizontalnem oziru k razv1dni kompleksni me-
trični stabilizaciji; 5. Janačkov glasbeni jezik kaže nekatere ostanke arhaič
nih glasbeno intonacijskih postopkov, na primer karakteristični melodični
duktus na temelju kvartkvintne 'razdelitve oktave.
Jiranek meni, da je teoretični ključ k Janačkovi estetiki v njegovi teo- riji napeva, v njegovih pozitivnih in negativnih znakih. Janačkovo znan- stveno zanimanje za govor je mogoče definirati tako, da je posvetil pozor- nost bolj sintagmatičnemu kot paradigmatičnemu, bolj govoru kot jeziku, kolikor je sploh mogoče reči, da ga je govor interesiral kot jezik. Na govoru je bil zainteresiran predvsem kot na zvočnem dokumentu, šlo nm je za
zvočni izraz ljudske psihe. To pojasnjuje, zakaj je bil njegov pristop k ži- vemu govoru fonetičen in nikoli fonološki, in zakaj je lahlrn Sychra s svo- jimi analizami pokazal, da je Janaček s svojimi stilnimi prijemi tudi kot pisatelj podčrtaval ne toliko semantično stTan teksta kot prej njegov nepo- sredni izraz. Janačkova psihološka absolutizacija in podcenjevanje socialno pogojene strani komunikacije govora, to in ono je bilo verjetno odraz pozi-
tivistične, posebno Wundtove psihologije. Nekritično, skocraj dobesedno pre- vzemanje Wundtovega principa t. i. psihofiziološkega paralelizma, je vpli- valo tudi na Janačkovo glasbeno-teoretsko miselnost, pa tudi na sicer zelo izvirno teorijo harmonije.
Vsekakor je bil Janaček večji umetnik kot teoretik, estetika njegovega skladateljskega dela pa je legitimnejša kot estetika njegovih literarnih del.
Moderna subjektivizacija izraza je v Janačkovem umetniškem delu upošte- vana z močnimi značilnostmi dramatizma. Sklicujoč se na sv;ojo študijo Dramaticke rysy Janačkova klavirniho stylu (Opus musicum, 10, 1978) ugo- tavlja Jiranek navzočnost teh dramatskih faktorjev tudi v tako subtilni vrsti, kot je klavirska tvorba tega skladatelja. Na splošno je mogoče creči, da je Janačkov realizem posebno značilen močan dramatski dinamizem.
Možno je predpostaviti, da je ta dinamizem zrasel pri Janačku iz stalne napetosti med teoretikom in umetnikom. Razumljivo je, da je naposled zmagala estetika umetnostnih dejavnikov nad estetiko teoretično pogojene miselnosti.
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